The obituary has been in draft form for awhile now.  People don’t read newspapers, and web ads aren’t working. The New York Times, parent company of our own Boston Globe, is in particularly bad shape.  Its stocks fell 60 percent this year, it’s mortgaging its building,  even the Red Sox are on the chopping block.  So, what comes next?  How will the world’s stories be told in the future?  New York Magazine doesn’t claim to have the answers, but it does think its got a few of the themes spotted.

This recent NYmagazine feature takes a look at the technologies that are shifting the voice of the news to the voice of the people and interviews a few of its pioneers.  Full disclosure:  one of the so-called-renegades is a friend of mine, Gabe — the ” talkative 27-year-old with two earrings and a love of The Big Lebowski”. The story hones in on a Word Train project that the group started to get reactions to the elections. The premise was simple: users entered one word throughout the day that expressed their feelings/thoughts at that moment (twitter-esque). What was surprising is the prominence it got on the monolith site.  More than 73,400 total words submitted by 65,000 unique voters.  The article says it best:

It was a kind of poll. It was a kind of art piece. It was a kind of journalism, but what kind?

Thought it was girl-geek worthy. Curious about what you guys think.  How will social media fit with journalism in the future, and where oh where is the money going to come from?